Just read the phone book

This is my most favorite King family graduation tradition.

It could be because the rest of the day involves the most boring speech ever – the one that lists the most popular baby names from 18 years ago,with a few stand-out exceptions. (I have been to enough graduations that I have tried to use my time wisely by coming up with an acceptable alternative to the annual listing of names but alas, it hasn’t come to me yet. Stay tuned, though, because we have plenty more graduations in which to use my creative energies.) And if you've never had the privilege of sitting through these speeches, just find an old phone book and start reading. It's the same thing.

It’s funny because if a high school student tried to give a speech, minus verbs, adverbs, prepositions, and adjectives, they’d never get to participate in the event. (Is “in absentia” a verb?)

Or maybe I love this tradition because it involves some of the best self-care known to man. Or woman. Or maybe just me. Give me a sewing machine, some old jeans, discarded (or sometimes stolen as soon as they have a stain or small hole) t-shirts, and you won’t see me leave the basement again.

Or at least not until Mr. Victor decides he needs something and there is no one else in the whole of the universe who can help him out with that need. Ever.

Thinking that there were three quilts to be made for Spring 2019, I started early their junior year. I started with the one that in the end, did not need to be finished by May 2019 after all. But that’s okay. It’s waiting for the day when we do have something amazing to celebrate. I am trusting that day will come and I’m willing to wait. In the end, I realized that I probably should have started even sooner than that since I was frantically sewing bindings on last week.

But they did get done.

But for those who prefer to see a bunch of 18 year olds dressed in the same fashionable gown, here are some of those photos.

We have decided that there is a special crown in Heaven for HopeAnne, who, by the time she graduates, will have had to sit through way too many of these proceedings.